Utagawa Hiroshige
1857

In the Snow, Moon, and Flowers series, Kanazawa Hakkei was chosen for the print to express the moon. A flock of geese and Kanazawa’s Hirakata Bay are illuminated by a full moon. In the center is a sand bar linked to and leading from the island of Nojima amid the scenery spread around it on an autumn night. Kanazawa Hakkei was a celebrated sight in Musashi Province. Hiroshige stopped there on his way to Hakone in May or June 1853, and made sketches of its scenery. The print bears a strong resemblance to Kanazawa Hakkei as Viewed from the Brush-Taking Pine at Nōkendō, one of the prints in the Illustrated Diary of a Trip to Famous Places in Musashi and Sagami Provinces, which is displayed in this exhibition. Scholars have recognized two types of prints in this series that differ in respect of the color used for the sky. One type is this print, which uses Prussian blue with shading. The other uses two kinds of blue and has a darker sky.